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Last week I was very fortunate to be able to attend the VAGTC Gifted Education Essentials Tools for Putting Theory into Practice conference which was held at CQ Function Centre Queens St Melbourne on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 May 2015 http://www.vagtc.asn.au/vagtc-conference-2015

The conference was officially opened by Judith Graley Member for Narre Warren Sth and Parliamentary Secretary to Hon. James Merlino, the Victorian Deputy Premier and Minister for Education who spoke of collaborating with the VAGTC to make Victoria ‘the Education State’ by acting on the accepted recommendations from the report into the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Studentshttps://giftedresources.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/victorian-parliamentary-inquiry-into-the-education-of-gifted-and-talented-students/
Funding has been allocated for increasing opportunities for rural and outer suburban students, Koori students, ESL students and low socio economic group students.
The VAGTC has been contracted by DET to deliver teacher and parent half day seminars in 5 country towns in Victoria. VAGTC are writing an online resource for teachers to be placed on the DET website.
DET were the major sponsor for the conference.

Day 2 was opened by Judy Connell from Catholic Education Office, also sponsors of the conference.

Conference participants were treated to musical performances by Sadie Mustoe 2014 from The Patch Primary School winner of The Maldon Minstrel Award for country music singer-songwriters on Thursday http://www.maldonfolkfestival.com/maldon-minstrel-award.htm
and Alby Sands, a young jazz musician and composer from St Leonards College on Friday.

Dr Hoekman also presented two mini keynote sessions Creating Agile Learning Spaces to Connect and Support the Community of Learners
and Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles: Creating Opportunities for Depth and Complexity

The Keynote address on Friday 22 May given by Manoj Chandra Handa, a Gifted Education Consultant at Oceans of Excellence http://www.oceansofexcellence.com/ Sydney NSW was titled Building Differentiated Schools of Curious Delight.
He also presented an inspiring session titled Strategies for Identifying and Addressing Underachievement among Gifted Learners

There was a great selection of presentations and workshops.
I enjoyed attending these sessions

Then Michele Juratowitch of Clearing Skies Brisbane http://www.clearingskies.com.au/index.html presented ‘Gifted and Happy?’
Michele observed that whenever she speaks to parents the thing they most often say to her is “I just want my child to be happy!” Her own research influenced by the work of Dr Martin Seligman, Prof Miraca Gross, Dr Linda Silverman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi showed that students who were suitably placed in terms of educational challenge and true peers could be happy and did not have to make a forced choice.
I really enjoyed the experience of participating in the conference which ran very smoothly and catching up with friends and colleagues, especially the members of the VAGTC Committee, and also meeting and learning from so many people who are passionate about the education of gifted students.

The main theme of the conference was differentiation and the keynote speakers were Susan Winebrenner from the US http://www.susanwinebrenner.com/and Debbie Youd from Tasmania. It was wonderful to hear Susan Winebrenner speak as her books are favourites of mine and ones I often recommend.
Susan Winebrenner’s opening keynote presentation was titled Compacting and Differentiation are Easy! Her closing mini keynote was The most equitable way to provide gifted education services – The Schoolwide Cluster Grouping Model.

David Southwick MP, chair of the Parliamentary Inquiry launched the ‘New opportunities for the gifted and talented directions paper’ and presented a conference session titled Unmasking Economic Potential of our Gifted Students in Victoria.

A Parent Seminar was run in conjunction with the conference on the morning of Tuesday 23. At this seminar Dr Anne Grant spoke about research into giftedness in early childhood and the factors impacting the transition to school.
Lynne Maher, the president of the Tasmanian Association for the Gifted, and her son Jonathan Geeves spoke about acceleration and the various types of acceleration which Jonathan had experienced. It was very helpful for the parents to hear about the social/emotional as well as the academic aspects of acceleration from a student’s point of view.
Susan Winebrenner also spoke to the parents covering many topics including differentiating instruction for gifted students and perfectionism

I also attended an excellent practical workshop presented by Andrea Blake and Kylie Graham titled Differentiating for Gifted Learners within an Inquiry Framework , a session presented by Christine Ireland titled Making differentiation work for gifted students: strategies, options and pitfalls and a session presented by Mark Smith describing the provisions for gifted and talented students at Macedon Grammar School titled Using Differentiation to Build Classroom Engagement and Uncover Student Talent

Conference participants were also treated to a display of fencing by Gabriel Spano and Sam Gilfillan, members of VRI Fencing Club https://www.vrifencing.com/ organised by Kayt Spano and Dr Zoltan Vilagosh directors of Fencing Victoria
Kayt describes fencing as ‘physical chess’ and says that it can be a sport for gifted students which builds transferrable skills in physical co-ordination and strength while appealing to their mental strategic and problem solving skills.

A Tribute to Professor John Geake was given by Jonah Oliver and the book Explorations in mind A collection of articles by John Geake edited by Wilma Vialle was launched

At the Conference Dinner life membership of the VAGTC was conferred on Christine Ireland in recognition and appreciation of her excellent commitment, contributions and service to the VAGTC and gifted education over many years.

I enjoyed the experience of participating in the conference which ran very smoothly and catching up with friends and colleagues and also meeting and learning from so many people who are passionate about the education of gifted students.

Australia is engrossed in welcoming home the athletes who participated at the London Olympics, planning street parades for them and evaluating the effectiveness and cost of the Australian Olympic campaign

This led Carmel Meehan, President of the VAGTC, to say during her evidence

“We celebrate people like Cadel Evans. He had a problem that he has solved in a physical way, and we have him on the front page of our papers today. We have people like Gustav Nossal and people who are working in stem cell research in our universities and who are doing brilliant work, but we do not see much of that on the front page of the paper. Our gifted and talented students are the resource that we have to solve those problems and the people who tomorrow will be at the cutting edge of helping humanity to survive.”

And

“We acknowledge our sporting heroes. We have a very good model for acknowledging excellence in our sporting domains. That could be transposed very easily into celebration of academic excellence, problem-solving, music and arts. In this country if we have good leadership in acknowledging gifted and talented people and celebrating their successes in the way that we celebrate our sporting heroes’ successes, then we are well on the way to having a very smart next generation coming through.